Stalking Memories
by alirodina
Summary: She was doing her best, but he was still drowning. RLNT, with suggestions of RLSB.


Stalking Memories

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters is to J.K. Rowling and associates.

Notes: I wrote this a while back, and let it lie around until I can look at it again without wincing. I tried to be fair to everyone in the story, I promise. The title is shamelessly stolen from an Ai poem.

*

"He is listening to sounds, to voices. Voices that have been gone for a year, but still ring so loudly…" --_The Crow_, James O'Barr

*

The wedding was a quiet one, attended by a few people. There were a few presents, several toasts to the bride and the groom, and come dusk the couple found themselves back in Remus's flat, the doors barred both in the normal and the magical ways, and she was glad to finally take off the dress that her mother had bullied her into wearing for her 'special day'.  
"Finally," said Tonks, running her hands through her hair in an uncanny echo of James Potter. "If I had to listen to any more of Mad-Eye's 'reminisces' I'd probably have strangled him, or drowned myself in the punch bowl."  
Remus smiled. "You're his favourite student. It's just natural that he treat you like the daughter he never had."  
"Merlin, you're unnatural, did you know?" she said. "Almost as bad as Dumbledore. Can you say something unpleasant about anyone, for a change?"  
"Oh, I can," he said, quickly. "You'd have to stick around longer for that."  
Like _he_ did, she wanted to ask. Thinking of the pain Remus had caused her, the self-serving lines and the 'it's all for your own good' attitude, sometimes she wanted to say things like that, to hurt him back. But looking at his face, the tiredness, and his empty-looking eyes, she didn't.  
"Believe me," she said instead. "I would."  
He crossed the space between them, holding her so close she couldn't breathe. "Yes."

*

Later, she looked at the books piled on the ottoman by his bed and lifted a dog-eared copy of _The Great Gatsby_.  
"Fitzgerald?" she said, raising one pink eyebrow in a manner she would have adopted while asking him if he believed in fortune-telling. "Isn't he a bit frivolous for you?"  
He knew from the twinkling of her eyes that she was joking. Sometimes he forgets that she was a half-blood, like him, and probably knew more about Muggles than he did.  
"That's not mine," he said.  
She opened the book, saw the spiky handwriting on the flyleaf and nodded. "Fills up half the page, doesn't he?"  
"He can write very nicely," he said, with a trace of a smile. "When he wants to."  
She drew up the bed covers around herself, still looking at the book. "Still, you must've liked Fitzgerald enough to leave him here."  
"To tell you the truth I haven't been spending a lot of time here recently." He looked up at the ceiling, tracing the cracks on the plaster with his eyes. "I don't know. Sirius must have left it there, the last time he was here."  
She moved slightly, the rustling sound of the bed sheets and the creaking of the bed amplifying the movement. He did not look at her, but he felt the silence almost breached, as if she had opened her mouth to say something and then thought the better of it.  
What do you want me to say? he thought of asking her, but didn't. He had made that mistake with Sirius once, and had taken a step back at the sight of the pale face looming down on him.  
"Why do you ask me that?" Sirius had asked. "So I can listen to the words you think I want to hear? And don't say you're sorry, because you're not."  
"Don't put words into my mouth, then," said Remus. Sirius looked at him, and then Sirius laughed.  
"No. Never," he said. "Prat."  
"Let's sleep. We have much to do tomorrow," Remus said, finally, tearing himself away from the memory. She nodded, and he finally met her eyes. Merlin, she was young. Really nothing but a baby, in retrospect. It was so easy to forget that she was older now than Lily when she had Harry. Tonks was warm and soft in his arms, breakable.  
She was doing her best, but he was still drowning.

*

She did not tell him, but she was having difficulty at work. She'd known it was going to happen, the gradual cooling of shoulders, and the half-finished sentences, awkward silences at her wake that started since people found out that she was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. And then her marriage. She looked at the faces of her colleagues, knowing that any one of them could be a Death Eater, or being controlled by them. For some reason, this comforted her.  
One time at dinner, he said without preamble, "I'm sorry."  
"What for?" she asked, although she didn't need to.  
"For this." He did not add, 'I told you so', and she felt a flicker of hope. "Dora, you know."  
"Have you ever told _him_ this?" she said, softly. "Sorry, because you are his friend, and his family could not abide the sight of you?"  
"That's different." Remus's voice sharpened.  
"Why is that? Because he was stronger than me? Because you trusted him more?" She wanted to think that she was not jealous. But she felt the secrets between them, her husband and her cousin, the lost years, the private jokes that she could have understood no sooner than speak Mermish. "Is it because I'm female, and younger? That you have to protect me somehow? Don't make me laugh, Remus."  
"That's not it." He spread his hands, palms down on the table. "He was my friend."  
"So am I," she said. And I am alive, I didn't leave you.  
"He," Remus began, haltingly. "He was the last person, the only one. We have changed so much, both of us. But together, we were Moony and Padfoot. Moony died with him." The last four words were no more than a whisper. "But I'm not making sense, am I?"  
She looked at his hands. Then finally, she said, "No. I think you are."

*

It was easy to romanticise someone who was not there. Memory can be harsh and kind as it will, but Remus did not have to kid himself. There was never a need to be kind to Sirius Black, in the same way he did not have to be dead to be romanticised.  
Sometimes Remus thought that he expected too much of Sirius. He was the infinite possibilities that never happened, the tampered flame, the silly smiles, the brilliant mind that seemed sane amidst all of that insanity because Remus suspected Sirius had always been mental to begin with.  
"I shouldn't have," he said aloud, in the darkness of the room. Their room now, his and hers. "But I've never been good at anything where he was concerned. Lily always said that I'd do anything for my friends."  
"I'm not asking you to forget about him," she pointed out.  
"How can I?" he laughed. "When sometimes you turn around and you look so much like him?"  
Her hand sought his under the blankets, tightening convulsively.  
"No. I never," he answered her unvoiced question. "I didn't marry you because of that."  
It was true. But her doubts affected him, made him doubt himself. He wanted to hold her close again that night, but she was too far away.

*

She had told him she was pregnant. She watched the fierce joy cross his face, and felt her heart leap in her chest.  
Several nights she waited in her old room, bearing her mother's silence half in shame and half in angry remorse. Today he will come, she will tell herself, knowing that he wouldn't. He was slowly unraveling before her eyes, and she knew he will die in this war. Some days she believed she can stop this, but more days and more days and she was slowly coming into terms with the fact that their time together would not be as she had thought it would be.  
In her mind's eye she can see her cousin's pale accusatory glare. "Don't you dare let that happen, Tonks."  
"But I can't stop it!" she said. "I can't, and I've been trying so hard."  
"Try again," the Sirius in her mind said. "Failure doesn't mean you have to stop trying."  
"If he comes back," she retorted.  
"He will come back."  
She wondered why, even in her mind, Sirius sounded so sure of himself, the smug little bastard.

*

But Remus did come back. She didn't know how much of him made it to her parents' house, but he was back and she cannot let other things matter.  
"That was a long time to get lost," she said, closing the door behind him.  
He was almost crying, but not quite. "I'm scared of being happy."  
And now it was she who held him close, squeezing hard, afraid to let him go. "Who isn't?"


End file.
